Cat and mouse…..why do we draw?

A tutorial/time lapse video of an illustration I did as part of my Inktober efforts last year. Often, I have an aesthetic and a loose concept in mind but that’s where the planning ends. I’ve been learning about my own process and much of it deals with context. I can be flippant. I can draw without really thinking too hard, and this can be a good thing. When I started drawing this cat and mouse, I had nothing but the time pressure as motivation. And the time pressure was of my own fabrication. I’ve always been fascinated with what motivates us the draw. On this occasion like many others, there was no client, no brief, no monetary value to making this art. It is easy to forget all about playing. And realistically, we can’t play all day everyday because life and eating and preferably keeping a roof over my head (however leaky), costs something-you have to stick to the bloomin’ project…..But, the playful aspect of these experiments does prove to be somewhat relevant and fruitful in actual real life. When `I sketched out the outline, I had assumed that using colour would be too time consuming. But part-way through creation, I felt compelled to inject these neon pinks which\, against the dark blue background, popped to deliciously. What it bled into, was a series of illustrations which I made in a similar vein, focusing on a limited but colourful palette which can transform the mood of an image entirely. This is a style I’ve introduced to a paid job, so I’m not going to underestimate the power of such faffery.

Layering up in Procreate and animating in Motionleap.

I suppose this is why illustration always appealed to me. Everything is a story. The drawing is the easier part…..the real hard labour is what happens before and after picking up the pencil. What I’m realising more everyday is that I draw because I need to tell stories. And I need to tell stories to cope with being a human navigating its way through what feels like unfathomable terrain. If pictures allow me to frame my version of the world and stop it feeling so terrifyingly tenuous, I think it’s important to know and to also not not know why on earth I’m doing it.

Geek stuff: when layering in Procreate, I tend to start with a sketch and keep this layer throughout as my reference, I will duplicate it and, hiding the original sketch layer, now smudge and shade the determining lines of this one. I will add highlights on a top layer and shadows on a low layer…..as the mid tones build up I am free to merge layers down and re-smudge to create more shading or duplicate layers to deepen contrasts.

Tutorial to show layering dark to light

I can’t boast that every hour of faff results in a lightbulb moment or even a useable piece of art, but each time I came to the black page, I was quicker in deciding what to draw, which colours to push, and I began forming ideas in my mind about how these characters and objects would interact with a world or with each other in larger, more thought-out and methodically composed ‘weird-scapes’ as I’ve started calling them. These larger works are all in states of ‘process’ and shall take time to finish. I am enjoying the progression and the layering. I am beginning to trust my ‘playtime’ but now prioritising my ‘building time’. Building time is when my desire for narrative and explanation kicks in. So, in the January fog of paid work and off the back of ‘play time’, storytelling is filling in the tiny cracks of time I have left after tending to human stuff like eating and moving my body. Building time is spent determining why I draw the things I draw, can they be utilised for something bearing more significance?. Building time is moving what I thought was frivolous art forwards with a purpose. Conscious creation is so much more satisfying, to my surprise. When a really provocative concept slaps you in the jowls and you’re out on your bike or buying bog roll……that momentary muse magic can have you pulling over and voice noting yourself-words spitting over your phone like rapid gunfire. It can be the reason you accidentally bought kitchen towel, your bum receiving unexpected tenfold absorbent ply this week…..The getting it down on paper (writing paper) as an image translation is merely the afterthought….

This is SO MUCH HARDER when physically drawing and painting, you are consistently layering up. With painting on an ipad, your layers are magically malleable; the layer system has changed the way I paint quite dramatically. I don’t know if this is how other digital artists work but it has become my intuitive method….faster but without losing the feeling of ‘drawing’ authenticity.